Cory Booker, left, with Rep. John Lewis at a second day confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington earlier today.

By Cliff Owen/A.P. Images/Rex/Shutterstock.

Breaking with precedent, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker testified Wednesday against the nomination of his colleague, Jeff Sessions, to serve as the next attorney general. “I do not take lightly the decision to testify against a Senate colleague,” Booker said in a statement. “But the immense powers of the attorney general combined with the deeply troubling views of this nominee is a call to conscience.”

Booker may have been answering another, less selfless call, too, when he took the microphone in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with dozens of members of the Congressional Black Caucus seated behind him and civil-rights icon Rep. John Lewis by his side. “I believe, like perhaps all of my colleagues, that in the choice between standing with Senate norms or standing up for what my conscience tells me is best for our country, I will always choose conscience and country,” he said.

His self-injection into the Senate hearing for Sessions—whose previous shot at a federal appointment, in 1986, was derailed amid allegations of past racist comments—sparked scuttlebutt that the former Newark mayor was using the opportunity to raise his profile, and criticism that he was trying to grab the spotlight. Booker, 47, has long been viewed as a rising star within the party, but his decision to break long-standing Senate precedent was a dramatic move for a junior senator, and one that seemed designed to position him as a potential future face of a divided, and largely leaderless, Democratic Party.

At times, Booker’s impassioned testimony sounded like a campaign speech, invoking the March on Selma and the Civil Rights Act with perfectly calibrated emotion, and echoing the rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. “Law and order without justice is unobtainable, they are inextricably tied together. If there is no justice, there is no peace,” he declared at one point, alluding to the rallying cry of Black Lives Matter. “The arc of the universe does not just naturally curve toward justice—we must bend it,” he added, his voice cracking.

His political foes were quick to accuse the ambitious young senator of transparent maneuvering. “I’m very disappointed that Senator Booker has chosen to start his 2020 presidential campaign by testifying against Senator Sessions,” Sen. Tom Cotton said in a statement,, calling the stunt “a platform for his presidential aspirations.”